


Nearest to Perfection

by rosewiththorns



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Bad Attitude, Consequences, Detroit Red Wings, Discipline, Disrespect, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kneeling, Kneeling Ritual, Kneeling Universe, M/M, Non-Sexual Submission, Ritual, Rookie Mistakes, Silent Treatment, Spanking, Teasing, hard work, mentoring, tradition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-26 21:31:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5021236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosewiththorns/pseuds/rosewiththorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dylan tests the boundaries with Drew, Riley teaches him what the limits are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nearest to Perfection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [loveforhockey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveforhockey/gifts).



> This piece was written at the request of Ducksducksducks, who wanted a tale like this involving Dylan Larkin and whom I hope will find this story enjoyable. 
> 
> The inspiration for the particular plot was a recent article about Dylan crossing the line with some of his jokes about the UM rivalry with MSU, and the idea of Dylan living with Riley came from a Riley instragram post showing the graveyard Dylan made for Halloween on his front lawn.

“The man with insight enough to admit his limitations is nearest to perfection.” 

Nearest to Perfection

Dylan had assumed that nothing could make the car rides to and from the Joe that he shared with Riley more unpleasant than the incessant banging from the stereo that Riley called music and that Dylan—who daily had to battle the compulsion to fiddle with the iPod Riley hooked up to the speakers not only because it was rude to mess with another guy’s tunes in his own car but also because there was probably nothing better on Riley’s iPod since Riley had the musical taste of a tone-deaf parrot—snidely referred to as the sound of two dogs screwing in an an alley full of empty tin trash cans. 

It turned out that he was more accurate than he would’ve liked in this assessment since literally nothing made the journey to the home Riley had taken him into stretch out into infinity like pi more than the echoing sound of silence. 

At first, Dylan was grateful for the quiet between them, for he had expected to be teased mercilessly by the one person on the team who was almost as skilled as he was at talking smack or lectured until his ears bled about a rookie not being allowed to taunt a veteran like Drew Miller as Dylan had if Riley was feeling the pressure to prove that he was mature enough to discipline a rookie in his charge. Hell, Dylan had even been prepared for a two-for-the-price-of-one special of mocking and scolding from Riley, but Riley didn’t so much as move his mouth on the ride home from the arena. 

Initially, Dylan had figured that Riley was not saying anything about his crossing the line with Millsie because he didn’t want to humiliate him. However, once he realized that Riley was glaring at him as if he had the balls to arrive at a white tie occasion stark naked, Dylan knew that whenever Riley did break his silence, he would be fucked—fucked in the ass without lube, not that he had ever experienced such a thing, but he could imagine it well enough, since he was nineteen, and nothing came more naturally to a nineteen-year-old male than picturing all the ways humanity had found to fuck one another. 

As if to mount as much tension in Dylan as possible, Riley remained as tight-lipped as a boulder even when he turned into the driveway and parked the car. When they exited the vehicle, Dylan hoped that Riley would crow loudly enough for the neighbors to hear every syllable about how the graveyard Dylan had constructed on the front lawn proved how creative and artsy he was, which he had never hoped before because Riley’s comment about that Halloween decoration was the definition of embarrassing. Dylan’s stomach flip-flopped as Riley continued to eye Dylan as strictly as a vice principal surveying a pupil on the brink of suspension as they walked up the brick pathway to the front door, which Riley opened with a jingle of keys. 

When they stepped over the threshold into the living room, Dylan was so relieved to have an excuse to escape from Riley’s furious silent treatment that he spun on his heel to hurry up the stairs to his bedroom but before he could begin the climb, Riley barked, “Where the fuck do you think you’re going, kid?” 

“To my room!” Dylan bristled at being called a kid and then winced as he recognized that an irate declaration that he was going to his bedroom only made him appear more like a child. At least he hadn’t been banished to his room or stamped his foot. There were some vestiges of maturity left for him to cling to, thank God for small favors. 

“Hell like you are.” Riley shook his sandy head and marched over to the couch. “I want to talk to you.” 

“Oh, now you want to talk,” scoffed Dylan, rolling his eyes and resenting that Riley felt he had the right to shift from giving him the silent treatment to lecturing him in five seconds flat just because Dylan had the misfortune of being a rookie, a status which sucked enough that he was already starting to look forward to the sophomore slump everybody bitched about but that had to be preferable to being a rookie who could get bossed around by anyone in the locker room. “You were quiet as a damn grave in the car. What crap are you pulling on me, huh? Did you temporarily forget how to use your tongue or something?” 

“No, but you might want to temporarily forget how to use yours before it lands you in any more shit today.” Scowling, Riley sat down on the sofa, which emitted a peculiar crinkle like a folding newspaper that it had never issued before. 

His glower deepening, Riley fumbled beneath his butt and extracted a copy of Sports Illustrated that he had been reading that morning as he ate breakfast there, lounging on the upholstered cushions like a sultan. Once he had settled himself, Riley tossed a velvet pillow on the hard wood floor between the couch and the coffee table, ordering in a tone as crisp and cold as fresh ice, “Kneel for me.” 

“Do I have to, Riley?” Dylan bit his lip and instantly regretted it when the iron tang of blood flooded his mouth. Damn it, he had to do a better job of remembering that Drew, being a complete bastard with the sense of humor of a riled hornet, had punched him in the jaw just because he had pretended to forget the name of Munn arena. 

“Why the hell wouldn’t you have to?” Riley stared at Dylan as if he had just advanced an argument that the world was actually flat as a map. 

“I’m only nineteen,” pointed out Dylan, his chin lifting. Although he tried not to read his own headlines—because if you got too big a head, it screwed up your skating—he did know that it had been a very long time since there had been a nineteen-year-old Red Wing. Probably the last nineteen-year-old Red Wing was Steve Yzerman, and nobody would ever have made Steve Yzerman do anything so undignified as kneel. The mere idea of such an event transpiring was as hilarious as it was blasphemous. 

“Exactly.” Riley had adopted an air of exaggerated patience. “You’re my rookie, Dylan, and you made a rookie mistake because you’re only nineteen, so you need to kneel for me so I can discipline you properly.” 

“If this is about you needing to tell the team you disciplined me, let’s just not and say we did with this whole kneeling shit.” Dylan waved a hand in dismissal of the kneeling tradition that didn’t sound like any fun for the rookie. “It would be easier for both of us, you know.” 

“Yeah, unluckily for you, Dylan, the Red Wing way isn’t about doing whatever is easiest.” Riley’s fingers were clutching the Sports Illustrated magazine in a taut roll. “It’s about working hard and being disciplined, and the whole kneeling thing as you call it isn’t shit. It’s a solemn ritual where those virtues are passed along from one Red Wing to the next. Understand?” 

“I understand that you’re about as fit to teach anyone about hard work and discipline as a deaf man is to conduct an orchestra.” Snorting through his nostrils like an enraged bull, Dylan jerked a palm at the plate with a half-eaten grapefruit and the yellow stain of the yolks from the two eggs over-easy that Riley had left on the coffee table as evidence that he had breakfasted in the living room. “You leave your crap everywhere like a toddler who hasn’t been potty-trained.” 

Riley didn’t retort and that was worse than anything withering he could have said. Instead, he beat the Sports Illustrated against his blue jeans, studying Dylan as if he were a crossword puzzle with none of the difficult words filled in. 

The sound of the glossed paper striking denim cut into Dylan in a way the reprimands hadn’t, and, as he saw with a start that his motor mouth had run away from him again, he mumbled, feeling repentant but afraid that he seemed sullen, “I’m sorry, Riley.” 

“Not as sorry as you’re going to be.” Eyeing Dylan with an almost sad sternness in his gaze, Riley stopped tapping his thigh with the magazine and patted his knee with his other palm instead. “Come here, Dylan.” 

On legs that felt as rubbery as pencil erasers, Dylan stumbled toward the sofa and was about to sink awkwardly as the Titanic onto the pillow when Riley grabbed his wrist, halting him. 

“Am I doing it wrong?” asked Dylan, his pale skin flushing to the roots of his dark hair as it occurred to him that there might be a wrong way to do something as personal and private as kneeling. 

“I told you to come here.” Again, Riley patted his knee, although this time he used the hand clutching Sports Illustrated, because the other was wrapped around Dylan’s wrist. 

“I am here. Are you blind or just stupid, Riley?” snapped Dylan, his temper surging again to cover his confusion. 

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Riley hissed, whacking Dylan’s rump with the rolled-up magazine with enough force that Dylan leapt an inch in the air. “It’s because of that bad attitude and lack of respect for everything that makes us Red Wings that I want you lying over my lap so I can give you the spanking you apparently need, kid.” 

“You want to spank me?” Dylan repeated, certain that he must have missed the point but afraid that he hadn’t and the smacks Riley had landed on his own thigh were just tests to make sure the magazine was an effective instrument of punishment: sufficiently stinging but not likely to leave marks. 

“That’s right.” Grim as any hockey coach announcing a bag skate, Riley nodded. “Now, you have five seconds to bend over my knee before I tug you over, but if I have to do that, I’ll be baring your ass instead of letting you keep your pants up.” 

Biting his lip and releasing another squirt of blood into his mouth, Dylan considered his unenviable situation, which seemed to be the embodiment of the proverb about being caught between a rock and a hard place. Submitting to a spanking at his age was a prospect as painful and embarrassing as being spanked, but being forced to take a spanking on a bare butt rather than through the protection of his jeans and briefs might be the only thing on the planet that was even more daunting. 

His indecision coast him the opportunity to make the choice between two deals with the Devil, because, before he could process what was happening, Riley had upended him and yanked him over his lap. When Dylan squirmed at the indignity of being hurled into this compromising position, Riley delivered a sharp blow to the seat of Dylan’s pants. 

“Any fighting will earn you extra swats, Dylan,” chided Riley in a voice that was scarily audible over Dylan’s yelp of protest at this rough reproach. 

Gritting his teeth with the effort of not wriggling as Riley unzipped the fly of his jeans and slid them down to his ankles, Dylan tried to pretend that he was sprawled under a palm tree on a beach in Hawaii, gulping down a pineapple smoothie. 

When Riley’s fingers curled around the elastic of his briefs, his tropical daydream shattered like smashed glass, and Dylan choked out from between teeth clenched tightly enough to give him a sore jaw, “Please keep those up, Riley.” 

“I’m afraid I can’t.” Riley seemed more firm than apologetic as he steered the briefs over Dylan’s hips and down his legs to encircle his ankles. “Whenever you don’t cooperate with a spanking I say you need, I’ll give it to you on your bare ass, kid.” 

Dylan was about to mutter that rule was totally unfair and barbaric, but his train of thought was derailed before he could speak by a stinging slap from the magazine on his left butt cheek. As if to ensure that he had Dylan’s attention, Riley landed another smarting smack to the right cheek before stipulating, peppering Dylan’s bottom with spanks, “When I tell you to kneel, that’s what you do. You don’t try to wiggle out of it like a fish on a hook. You accept your discipline, and you don’t call me lazy or undisciplined. Got it, Dylan?” 

This final question was emphasized with the harshest blow yet, so Dylan could only gasp out, “Yes, Riley.” 

“Good. You’re being more respectful now than you were earlier.” Despite his words of praise, Riley was hammering the magazine against Dylan’s bare flesh with growing fervor, and Dylan flinched both at the noise of the magazine cracking against his skin like a whip and at the lightning bolts of agony that flashed across his backside with every strong stroke. “Being respectful is important for a rookie. A rookie can’t sass a veteran like Millsie or me as you did today. You can joke around with us, but you can’t insult us. Remember that if you act like an ass, I’ll beat yours.” 

“I’ll remember,” Dylan rasped out of heaving lungs that were working overtime, desperate to convince Riley to cease igniting fires in his rump, which was burning so much that he probably could have roasted a marshmallow on it. He definitely wouldn’t be able to sit for a week and wouldn’t forget this encounter with a Sports Illustrated for many years. Heck, this memory would most likely linger into his senility as something to tell the snot-nosed grandchildren if he ever got old enough to not care about making himself the literal butt of a joke. 

“And remember—“ Riley was obviously gearing up to a mighty finish in his lecture, as the spanking had reached a crescendo that caused tears to spill from Dylan’s eyes—“things like kneeling and being respectful of teammates are what make the Red Wings successful. You don’t get to spit on traditions older than you are just because they aren’t convenient or easy for you.” 

Dylan was in too much pain to point out sarcastically that piracy was also a tradition older than he was, but that didn’t mean he was about to hop on a ship and sail around stealing other people’s treasures. That was just as well, because his lack of a response seemed to persuade Riley that the last drop of rebellion had evaporated from inside him. 

“All right.” Riley tossed aside the magazine and pulled Dylan’s pants and briefs back to their original locations, eliciting a faint whimper from Dylan as the fabric traveled across the scorched terrain of his backside. Rubbing soothing shapes on Dylan’s shaking back, Riley continued softly, “That’s the end of your spanking, Dylan. Let’s hope you really do remember it because I don’t want to have to remind you.” 

“Me neither,” grunted Dylan. “I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from it if you do.” 

“Don’t try to make me feel bad, scamp.” Riley chuckled. “A good spanking is what you needed.” 

“When it hurts like hell fire, I don’t know why it’s called good.” With the cuff of his sweatshirt, Dylan swiped the saltwater away from his eyes. 

“Because it makes you good.” His chuckle edging into laugh territory, Riley nudged Dylan toward the floor. “Now you’re going to kneel for me so we can discuss how you treated Millsie today.” 

With a sigh because he had hoped that Riley might have forgotten about the kneeling ritual while he was giving Dylan the spanking of his life, Dylan collapsed onto the pillow. 

Brushing the blood away from Dylan’s lip with a Kleenex from the box on the coffee table, Riley remarked, “You wouldn’t have this battle scar if you knew when to keep your mouth shut, kid.” 

“It’s hardly a battle scar, Riley,” countered Dylan, taking advantage of the fact that Riley was busy chucking the bloody tissue into the wastepaper basket to notice him rubbing his searing ass against the heels of his tennis shoes. 

“There are limits to what you can say and do when you’re a rookie and a Red Wing.” Riley’s gaze locked on Dylan again, and Dylan stopped trying to rub the heat out of his backside because he didn’t want to get caught doing such a childish thing and because the friction only increased the blaze in his bottom. “That’s my point.” 

“How can I discover the limits if I don’t push the boundaries?” Dylan, lost somewhere in the wasteland between challenging and compliant, arched an eyebrow. 

“Well, if you’re determined to push the boundaries, don’t be surprised when you run into the electric fence, Dylan.” Riley squeezed Dylan’s shoulder in a gesture that contained an equal measure of affection and admonishment. “Especially when you’re pushing the boundaries with Millsie. His funny bone was surgically removed around the time when his hair started to turn white as snow.” 

“Just my luck, Riley.” Dylan twisted out of Riley’s grasp on the principle that he was too old for comforting touches. “I test the limits with the one person in the locker room who has a worse sense of humor than you.” 

“Insolent little rookie.” Riley ruffled Dylan’s black hair. “For your information—not that it’s any of your business, of course—I have a great sense of humor. Only a person with a sense of humor as awesome as mine would ever have gotten a DUI while dressed up as a Tellytubby.” 

“Do you really want to give me bad ideas?” Dylan’s eyes gleamed with the promise of plotting mischief. 

“My ideas are always good.” Riley rapped Dylan’s temples lightly with his knuckles. “Besides, if you’re going to push the boundaries, I expect you to be original. Nothing would disappoint me more than you being a lame-ass copycat.” 

“I thought that was what being a Red Wing was all about, Riley.” Dylan’s forehead furrowed as he reflected for what felt like the millionth time since training camp had started on the names literally written on the walls of the Joe—painted in the hallway so that anyone who passed could remember the awards the listed players had won, compare themselves to lofty ideals those stars had embodied, and judge themselves in need of serious improvement. The names on the wall like all monuments honored the listed but damned everyone else to anonymous inadequacy. “Aren’t I supposed to try to be an exact copy of all the Red Wing stars who came before me, even though we all know that I’ll never be anything more than a cheap knockoff with half the words splotched?” 

“No.” Riley massaged the knots that had tied in the nape of Dylan’s neck, untangling them with the ginger touch of his fingertips. “Don’t be an idiot. Throughout the history of the Red Wings, there have been so many stars that you couldn’t possibly be like them all unless you suffered from a severe case of multiple personality, a craziness that would still make you different from all the stars that came before you.” 

“So I’m doomed to failure before I even start.” Dylan’s head slumped against Riley’s knee. “That pretty much sums it up, yeah.” 

“You’re more melodramatic than Meryl Streep.” Riley patted Dylan’s cheek briskly. “Snap out of your depression. You aren’t supposed to be an exact copy of the players who came before you. All you have to do is learn from them and behave on and off the ice in a way that honors them and what they’ve done. Apart from that, you’re supposed to be yourself and contribute to the organization in your own way.” 

“What a relief.” Dylan rolled his eyes, although he did feel oddly reassured by Riley’s statement. “I’m sure that won’t be even harder.” 

“Come on, Dylan.” Riley’s fingers combed Dylan’s hair. “With that piss-poor attitude, everything is tough shit.” 

“Speaking of tough shit—“ Dylan cast a sidelong glance up at Riley—“am I done being punished for taunting Millsie?” 

“By me you are.” Riley grinned as he cuffed Dylan’s shoulder. “I bet Millsie will have something dreadful planned for you, though. My punishment will seem like a walk in the park on a spring day once you suffer whatever torment Millsie inflicts upon you, because I can promise you that his revenge may not be quick or particularly inspired, but it will be terrible. In the locker room, he’s a proponent of vigilante justice. There are no limits to what he’ll do when he’s seeking vengeance.”


End file.
